Real Estate News

Canadians appear to have dodged that housing crash everybody has been so afraid of for 10 years

Canada’s once-lofty housing market is achieving a best-case soft landing for policy makers trying to cool things down without triggering a collapse.

The latest string of data indicates the market is experiencing only a modest adjustment in prices in the face of higher interest rates and tougher regulations brought in to tackle a boom that saw values more than double in Toronto and Vancouver since 2009.

It’s a Goldilocks scenario that reduces risk in what had become the economy’s main vulnerability — an impressive achievement only a year after the country suffered a crisis of investor confidence because of debt and housing worries.

“It’s a pretty good spot to be in, avoiding boom but avoiding bust as well,” Eric Lascelles, chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada Global Asset Management in Toronto, said in a phone interview Thursday. “The rule changes that have been made have been effective in cooling these markets down.”